Forum OpenACS Q&A: SAP DB?

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1: SAP DB?
Posted by Phillip Thurmond on 04/28/01 06:23 PM
Has anyone had experience with the newly open source database,
SAP DB
(http://www.sap.com/solutions/technology/sapdb/develop/dev_sources.htm)
Some claim it is more fully featured than any of the current open
source databases.  Would anyone lend any truth to that statement.
Perhaps this is another db openacs can support?
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2: Response to SAP DB? (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on 04/28/01 06:58 PM
This isn't news, actually - they released sources about a month ago and were releasing free binaries some months earlier, when they first made their plans to open source public.

Yes, we should be *very* interested in supporting this data base.  In fact, if there's anyone here who has a personal interest in this who's not actively involved in the 4.x project, I'd encourage them to bring up SAP DB and start experimenting with it.

I'd like to know how hard it is to set up, configure, etc.  I'd like to know something about the  client interface.  They have support for calling the db from Perl and Python which should provide nice examples of how hard it is to use the client library.  Is it multi-threaded?  If so we could write a native OpenNSD driver for it.  If not, an external driver, maybe even the ODBC driver, would have to be used, which does impact performance somewhat (not as bad as it did in AOLserver 2.* though!)

I'd like to know some details about their programmatic language, since  ACS 4.x is so dependent on the in-db API.

I don't really want to see us divert resources from the immediate goal  of getting OpenACS 4.x up and running with Postgres, though.

It will be surprisingly easy to port OpenACS 4.x to other full-featured RDBMS's, and SAP DB is a very, very interesting target.

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3: Response to SAP DB? (response to 1)
Posted by Patrick Giagnocavo on 05/01/01 12:08 AM
Right now, at least, they have their own binary version of a customized make utility called "VMAKE" - versions only for Solaris and Linux.<P>Once they fix that, and either release VMAKE in source code form or else port the make rules over to gmake or bsd make, then it will be worth trying.
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4: Response to SAP DB? (response to 1)
Posted by Kapil Thangavelu on 05/05/01 03:18 AM

i've been experimenting with sapdb recently and asking questions on the sapdb mailint list, here's a quick summary of my thoughts.

  • its designed for 24x7
  • it has around a thousand run time config options
  • its a pain to compile (uses old c++ compiler for bin compatiblity, custom make system build environment)
  • the exposed python/perl interfaces make writing admin scripts fairly easy.
  • triggers seem slightly non standard in execution behavior and somewhat limited (no before triggers)
  • the procedural language is nice, reminds me of a downsized pl/sql, there seem to be plans for java stored procs at a later date. the procedural language includes cursor support, exception handling, (in|out|in/out) var args, transaction control.
  • nice usage docs, skimy dev docs.

more importantly from an acs point of view, it doesn't currently (7.308) support stored procs calling other stored procs. so it looks like a non starter till this is done.

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5: Response to SAP DB? (response to 1)
Posted by Richard Biffl on 05/28/02 05:31 AM
The verdict on SAP DB last year was that it wouldn't work for OpenACS because it didn't allow a stored procedure to call another stored procedure. That restriction was recently lifted, in version 7.3.0.18.
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6: Response to SAP DB? (response to 1)
Posted by Sam Snow on 07/18/02 06:41 PM
SAP DB vs PostgreSQL is being talked about right now over on slashdot...

http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/02/07/16/1820219.shtml?tid=99